FIC: Take Me Out
Title: Take Me Out - Part Seven
Pairing: This part, Talbert/Women, Lipton/Speirs, Buck/Malarkey, Babe/Roe
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Insert long and winding speech about how they are not mine, here.
Summary: It's the beginning of another legendary season and Team E has been training for this for too long to do anything but win.
Notes: This is, in fact, a modern-day AU. Throw what you know to the wind! Embrace the semi-crack! I have no manner of knowing how many parts it is, but I do have a set ending in mind. In this part, Talbert has an unspeakable talent with women, bets on nurses are placed, Buck plays chaperone, Babe gets brave, and Speirs may be trying to provoke new legends about him.
PART ONE: In which Nixon thinks about orgies, everyone gets drunk, Perconte tries to be sensible around George Luz, and Speirs is one scary man.
PART TWO: In which Lipton gives Speirs the chance to dig himself a deeper grave, Buck enjoys Malarkey (and his cooking), and Babe gets recruited.
PART THREE: In which Liebgott takes it out on Webster, strip poker happens, and the plot appears.
PART FOUR: In which the boys learn of their possible fate, Babe gets pinned with laundry duty, and Harry is a very happy and very drunk man.
PART FIVE: In which Winters gets a new job, Harry has vicarious sex, and it's Webster versus Liebgott, round 2.
PART SIX: In which Lipton denies the opportunity to play Team Savior, Joe Toye is the centre of attention, and Liebgott has a new mission.
“You disgust me,” muttered Luz as he dragged one of Talbert’s wrists with him.
Muck had the other as they headed for his jeep. “You? Are my hero,” he assured him with a broad grin on his face.
Behind them, two girls from the local bar were leaning against the wall and watching a half-dressed Talbert rushed along and redressed by the other members of the baseball team, while Talbert grinned tipsily at his current situation. One of them even had on the uniform worn by the local nurses at the hospital, though the boys watching from the sliding doors in the lobby had yet to decide whether it was real or just a costume. That said, there was already a sizable bet on it.
“I swear it’s real,” Penk insisted. “Look at the nametag! It’s got a last name, even. Women don’t spend the extra dough to get last names embroidered onto a costume.”
Muck gestured helpfully to Penk as he placed a twenty into the pot.
“Smith,” More countered. “The last name is Smith. The only way it could be more generic is if she was Jane Doe.”
Talbert was pushed forward while Luz dug out the keys to his car.
“Whoa!”
“No way.”
“You are not driving,” Martin insisted, snatching the keys immediately out of Luz’s hands and taking the lead of the motley band of seven who were heading to relieve the previous crew of their Joe Toye duty. Muck, Penk, Luz, Talbert, Martin, Bull, and More were heading to replace Bill and Buck from their post, having been there for almost seven hours and enduring the morphine-addled ramblings of Joe under a self-controlled drip. Well, at least, self-controlled until he’d started getting in an argument with Bill over whose responsibility it’d been for the ball. Apparently, according to Buck, he’d decided at that moment that Joe needed himself a good nap.
“What’s wrong with my driving!” Luz protested.
“There’s already one of us in the hospital,” Martin muttered, unlocking the doors from across the parking lot. “Like we need seven more?”
That argument went on good and strong, but Penkala and Muck had bigger fish to fry and along with More, pinned Talbert with them as they wandered to the car. Penk nudged Talbert in his side with an elbow, but nothing they seemed to say or do was going to wash that blissful grin off Talbert’s face.
“Come on, fess up,” Muck insisted. “She was a nurse, right? I mean, she had to be. It wasn’t even that sexy a costume.”
“It’s not the costume that makes them sexy, it’s the idea,” More countered. “She wasn’t a nurse.”
“Was too!”
“Not in a million years.”
Talbert just kept strolling forward, his purposeful walk and his silence on the subject only driving the remaining three members of the Express to start bickering louder than before about whether or not Talbert’s interest in women extended to the medical field of professionals.
By the time they got to the hospital, Bill was waiting in the hall.
“I got booted,” he explained with a sour look on his face. He was splitting his time winking at the nurse at the desk and conversing with the men as they arrived. “Buck said I was riling Joe and that the hospital couldn’t afford to go through that much morphine in one night. Can you believe that? Anyway, good thing you boys are here, my ass is getting real tired of hospital chairs. Nurses say they can’t even do anything about it,” he joked, winking once more at the girl behind the desk. “So, sweetheart, you said you were getting off soon?”
“As soon as my replacement arrives,” the woman agreed politely, even if she did happen to be looking Bill up and down with an appraising eye.
“Holy shit,” Penkala swore with a giddy laugh, elbowing Muck in the side.
“You have gotta be kidding me,” More muttered his complaint as the group of them watched that Smith girl with the nurse’s uniform walk down the hall. She only stopped to tug on Talbert’s collar and pull him into a long kiss, whispering some mysterious something into his ear before shifting to sit behind the desk.
There was a long look and a couple of hushed comments shared between she and the departing nurse and for all her earlier looks at Bill, suddenly all eyes were on Talbert.
“You have really fucking gotta be kidding me,” Bill deadpanned when it became all too clear what was about to happen. There was a long sigh and she was sidling up to Floyd Talbert, he of the female charms and asking questions about if he had really done all the things that Miss Smith had commented about in that short time they had spent conversing.
“Tough luck, Bill,” Luz offered. “Could be worse. You could be Joe Liebgott.”
“Why, what’s Joe doing?”
“I’m pretty sure the law considers it stalking,” Penk offered helpfully.
“Getting even with Webster in some way that requires getting the keys to every hotel he’s in on the trip. He’s spending the night calling ahead and getting copies of every last one,” Luz interjected, draping himself over Penkala and Muck’s shoulders to join the conversation. “It’s sad, really. Sad. Almost as sad as Malark sitting alone in that room of his.”
“Not for that long,” the booming voice interrupted as Buck wandered out of the room. “Soon as I get back, I’m dragging him out for darts and drinks until I have to go play chaperone for Lipton and Speirs and I swear,” he muttered, “to god, if someone could just have mercy on me and shoot me, it wouldn’t be too soon.”
“Come on, get out of here,” Martin coaxed. “We’ll watch Joe.”
“No more morphine. Bill’s already gotten him on too much after they had an argument about who was the better outfielder,” Buck warned sternly, digging his keys out of his pocket and cuffing Bill upside the head. “Come on, Casanova, we’ll bring you to the bar and see what fish you can reel in.”
“Goddamn Talbert,” Bill was still muttering under his breath, intermingled with an Italian curse here and there.
“Hey uh, guys?”
“Yeah, Tab, we know,” Muck sighed. “Just pick us up in a couple hours when you’re done.”
With that, the change in shifts was official and the group of six (a man down with Talbert’s ineffable talents with women bagging him yet another encounter) wandered into Joe’s room to let out a raucous cheer of greeting.
“Hey!”
“Joe Toye, man of the night!”
“Brought you a cigar, buddy.”
“Fuck you guys,” Joe muttered hoarsely. “I thought I was gonna get some sleep.”
“What, in this league?” Luz cracked. “Never.”
*
“I thought we were staying in,” Malarkey was complaining from the bed where he hadn’t bothered to dress past the boxers that hung low on his waist. His hair was still a red jumble of a mess from being grabbed at by Buck. Their pre-practice tumbles in bed (‘warm-ups’, they had been calling them) had turned into ‘once-a-nightly’s and had then turned into ‘whenever-we-have-a-spare-moments’. “We were gonna try and break the three time record.”
The clock read 6:44 and Buck Compton was doing up his tie, having showered and done his best to look well-dressed. He was also going to be painfully punctual for the fear that Speirs might do something unseemly to him if he wasn’t.
“As much as Speirs doesn’t want me there tonight, I’ve got to be there for Lipton,” Buck said apologetically, watching Malarkey in the mirror. “You could come?”
“And watch an hour of back-and-forth lovers’ spat? Pass. I’ll wait until Babe goes to the hospital to relieve the guys. I think there was talk of a drinking game while we watch Anaconda when Muck and Penk get back,” he said excitedly, grabbing at his shirt and sliding into it. “We’re using tequila.”
“You’re brave men with defunct livers,” Buck said, ripping off a mock-salute. He leaned over the bed and pressed a firm kiss to Malarkey’s lips, one that was rife with the promise of a raincheck.
It would be the last ounce of pleasure he’d get for a very long while.
Just as suspected, the scene at the bar was torture at best. Buck had pulled up a chair to sit between Lipton and Speirs, both in the grips of what appeared to be a long-running staring contest that neither wanted to give up. They each had a Scotch and they each seemed determined to walk out of that bar the winner in their tense relationship.
“Don’t all greet me at once,” Buck joked, only to get resounding silence in response. He smiled tersely, glancing to Lip. “So, Lip, how’s things?”
“Good, Buck, thanks for asking,” he politely replied, though he didn’t budge his gaze from Speirs. “They’d be better if we could be elsewhere.”
“Funny, I thought they’d be better if we were talking,” Speirs countered. “And I’m just fine, Buck, thank you for coming to Carwood’s attempts to make this less awkward. Funny how well that worked, huh,” he noted wryly.
“Who needs another round, everyone? Great!” Buck mock-chipperly commented and glancing barwards, he sighed as he saw his salvation. “Jesus fucking Christ, thank you,” he muttered under his breath. “Webster!” He nearly catapulted himself over to the bar, ordering himself a vodka-tonic and sitting in the stool beside the writing man.
“Buck,” Webster greeted pleasantly. “I haven’t seen you since…”
“LA,” Buck filled in with a grin.
“That’s right,” Webster commented with a knowing and rueful smile. “You ‘borrowed’ my intern for the day and somehow managed to convince him to drop out of his promise to attend an Ivy school for UCLA,” he reminisced. “I was going to get a nice referral.”
“Can’t blame the boy for having taste,” Buck pointed out. “What’re you doing here?”
Webster held up his spiral notepad and then his beer, grimacing heavily. “Just got through a couple rounds of interviews with some of the league officials. The word they keep giving is that a decision has been made and they’ll let the community at large know as of next Monday. That’s…what, your Utah stop?”
“We leave for Vegas tomorrow, yeah,” Buck concurred. “So lemme ask you something,” he said, reaching for his drink and eyeing Speirs and Lipton for the best opportunity to slide back into the conversation. Now seemed a poor time as they were having a low and heated discussion with each other. “Why Express? You’d think that the way Joe Liebgott hounds you, you’d ask for a reassignment.”
Webster cradled his beer by the neck, shrugging idly. “You’re the best team in the league. I want to be affiliated with the talent,” he made his excuses. “And Joe’s harmless.”
“Gnats are harmless, doesn’t mean they aren’t annoying.”
“I can deal with annoying. Just keep winning,” he consulted and offered Buck the two drinks for Lipton and Speirs that he’d also come to get.
“Next Monday, huh?”
“Next Monday,” Webster confirmed. “And I don’t know what the decision is. They’re tight-lipped about it, sorry. They don’t tell us much of anything.” Buck offered a ‘what can you do’ shrug about it and Webster offered a nod. “Good luck at the game tomorrow,” he offered. “And uh, tell Lieb I said hi.”
“You’re just taunting him now, aren’t you,” Buck said knowingly.
But Webster was already back to his article to give a proper answer to that question. Buck steeled himself with three glasses in hand and found his way back to the table, hovering when he could finally hear the words to that quiet conversation.
“She’s been lying to you,” Lipton was calmly saying.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she’s not in love with me, Ron,” he countered. “She’s been in love with you this whole time and she hated that you picked me. She loves you, not me. And you slept with her.”
Their conversation was quickly overtaken by silence and Buck felt that there was no better time than right that second to descend with the drinks, feeling that more alcohol was just about the only cure that could help this conflict.
“So, Webster had some news about the league,” he offered, returning to the table as if there was no tension hanging thickly in the air and attempting to smother them heavily without even needing a pillow. “Turns out we’ll know our fates next Monday, how about that?”
“Carwood…”
“I wouldn’t lie,” Lipton said firmly, ignoring Buck’s re-entrance to the conversation. Buck felt about three times as uncomfortable as before and a glance back to Webster showed that he was shaking someone’s hand and taking another meeting, so that avenue of escape was out of the question. “Ron…”
“Excuse me,” Speirs interrupted curtly, pushing his chair back and making a brisk exit from the table and the bar.
“Official business, huh?” Buck commented idly, shooting Lipton a knowing glance before standing and reaching to grab Speirs’ untouched Scotch and sliding it over the table to Lipton. “Go on, you’re gonna need that.”
*
Babe was having trouble keeping his eyes open, seeing as he’d been giving the graveyard shift at the hospital (“Rookie gets it!” Muck had cheerfully announced, at which point Babe had asked when the rookie stopped getting the crap jobs and Toye had informed him in his morphine-induced haze that he had to deal until his replacement turned up). It was getting to be about two in the morning and he wasn’t going to last the night.
He still didn’t know how he was going to make it through practice the next day and thanked god that he probably wouldn’t be starting the game that afternoon. He figured if nothing else, this’d be good practice for their next stop when they got to Vegas and the team was staying out at all hours of the night gambling, drinking, and enjoying the wealth of women to choose from.
“You look like you’re well past exhausted.”
Babe started awake, searching the room for the lone voice. Toye was knocked out completely by the drugs and it was almost like an angel was there watching over him. Because, well hell, someone had to have pressed that Styrofoam cup of coffee into his hand. That someone just happened to be Gene Roe.
“What’re you doing here?” Babe mumbled sleepily, readjusting himself in the chair and clutching the cup with his hands, peering through half-lidded eyes to see Roe illuminated by the hospital lights and looking a bit too literally like an angel for Babe’s likings. “Thought everyone sane was asleep.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Roe commented, dragging a chair to the other side of the bed. “Thought I’d come pay Joe a visit when he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of guys.”
“So I’m what, harmless?”
Roe managed a hint of a shrug before hiding a smile behind his hand. “Something like that,” he agreed in that familiar and soothing drawl of his. “Drink your coffee, Edward,” he advised.
“Keep calling me Edward, I might not keep being so harmless,” he muttered into the caffeinated liquid. Still, Babe couldn’t exactly stop being so fucking thrilled about the fact that of all the people in the world, Roe was here with him, albeit because of a bout of insomnia and his concern for a teammate. “You hear about us being in trouble?”
“I did,” Roe agreed softly, nodding gravely. “Heard you were taking interviews and selling advertising all yesterday.”
Babe scowled, still displeased that the Express was now being officially sponsored by some energy drink just because they couldn’t finance the rest of the teams because the country wasn’t aware of the goddamn sport and the damn league. “Yeah, we sold the advertising. Made a couple bucks, so what?”
“It’s all working to something, Edward,” Roe assured, reaching over the bed to clasp his free hand (loosened from his grip when he pried it off to use it in the midst of his ranting) and suddenly their hands were twined over Joe Toye’s ankles and Babe really was starting to wonder when he’d fallen asleep for this to be happening. Babe shifted until his thumb was brushing against the pulse in Roe’s wrist and he glanced at the hospital blankets littering the bed beneath, drawing his hand back when things spent a solid moment chancing towards very awkward.
Babe took a long drag of his coffee, not sure what the hell was going on, and decided that if he was learning baseball from Bill, he might as well take a couple of life lessons seriously, too.
“You like me, don’t you?” he demanded, approaching the situation bluntly. “Or, you say you do. You like me as a guy, a friend, yeah?”
“Sure I do,” Roe agreed easily, looking a bit confused by the sudden turn in conversation.
“And I think you like me more than that,” Babe kept going, blazing forward into that unknown territory and putting it all on the line. It was just like Bill said, you had to force forward if you were ever going to make progress. “I mean, you’re here and you were at the laundromat and Perco said there was a call from you at the front desk waiting for me and…and I’m not saying,” he paused wildly, a bit of a howl of protest in his tone, “I’m not saying I’m gonna whale on you for it or anything, I just think you like me.”
There was a long pause and suddenly, Babe was feeling like a real idiot for saying anything.
“Well?” he kept going. “Do you?”
“What, like you?” Roe asked, clearly teasing. “Edward, you ever stop to notice the coffee’s exactly the way you like it?”
Fuck.
“No,” he said, feeling more than a bit stupid.
“Guarnere told me how you like it best,” he said, slowly shifting to get up from his seat. “I don’t take the time to research the coffee drinking habits of men that I don’t like.” He reached over to squeeze a still-unconscious-Toye’s shoulder before making his way to the doorway. It was only there that he lingered, chancing a look back at Babe. “So yeah,” he admitted with the hint of a nod. “I might like you some.”
With that, all the light was off him, whatever angelic presence was gone, and Babe’s coffee was rapidly turning cold.
“What the…” Joe Toye also happened to be rousing, glancing at Babe. “Was someone else here?”
“Yeah, Roe came to check on ya,” Babe agreed with a broad grin. “Not a bad guy, huh?”
“Yeah,” Toye agreed, lying back down and closing his eyes. “You’d think that.”
Babe couldn’t even bring himself to get pissy with him for making the same retorts that all of Express had been making since he joined the team. Hell, Roe might like him some. It was a good goddamn day.
tbc
Pairing: This part, Talbert/Women, Lipton/Speirs, Buck/Malarkey, Babe/Roe
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Insert long and winding speech about how they are not mine, here.
Summary: It's the beginning of another legendary season and Team E has been training for this for too long to do anything but win.
Notes: This is, in fact, a modern-day AU. Throw what you know to the wind! Embrace the semi-crack! I have no manner of knowing how many parts it is, but I do have a set ending in mind. In this part, Talbert has an unspeakable talent with women, bets on nurses are placed, Buck plays chaperone, Babe gets brave, and Speirs may be trying to provoke new legends about him.
PART ONE: In which Nixon thinks about orgies, everyone gets drunk, Perconte tries to be sensible around George Luz, and Speirs is one scary man.
PART TWO: In which Lipton gives Speirs the chance to dig himself a deeper grave, Buck enjoys Malarkey (and his cooking), and Babe gets recruited.
PART THREE: In which Liebgott takes it out on Webster, strip poker happens, and the plot appears.
PART FOUR: In which the boys learn of their possible fate, Babe gets pinned with laundry duty, and Harry is a very happy and very drunk man.
PART FIVE: In which Winters gets a new job, Harry has vicarious sex, and it's Webster versus Liebgott, round 2.
PART SIX: In which Lipton denies the opportunity to play Team Savior, Joe Toye is the centre of attention, and Liebgott has a new mission.
“You disgust me,” muttered Luz as he dragged one of Talbert’s wrists with him.
Muck had the other as they headed for his jeep. “You? Are my hero,” he assured him with a broad grin on his face.
Behind them, two girls from the local bar were leaning against the wall and watching a half-dressed Talbert rushed along and redressed by the other members of the baseball team, while Talbert grinned tipsily at his current situation. One of them even had on the uniform worn by the local nurses at the hospital, though the boys watching from the sliding doors in the lobby had yet to decide whether it was real or just a costume. That said, there was already a sizable bet on it.
“I swear it’s real,” Penk insisted. “Look at the nametag! It’s got a last name, even. Women don’t spend the extra dough to get last names embroidered onto a costume.”
Muck gestured helpfully to Penk as he placed a twenty into the pot.
“Smith,” More countered. “The last name is Smith. The only way it could be more generic is if she was Jane Doe.”
Talbert was pushed forward while Luz dug out the keys to his car.
“Whoa!”
“No way.”
“You are not driving,” Martin insisted, snatching the keys immediately out of Luz’s hands and taking the lead of the motley band of seven who were heading to relieve the previous crew of their Joe Toye duty. Muck, Penk, Luz, Talbert, Martin, Bull, and More were heading to replace Bill and Buck from their post, having been there for almost seven hours and enduring the morphine-addled ramblings of Joe under a self-controlled drip. Well, at least, self-controlled until he’d started getting in an argument with Bill over whose responsibility it’d been for the ball. Apparently, according to Buck, he’d decided at that moment that Joe needed himself a good nap.
“What’s wrong with my driving!” Luz protested.
“There’s already one of us in the hospital,” Martin muttered, unlocking the doors from across the parking lot. “Like we need seven more?”
That argument went on good and strong, but Penkala and Muck had bigger fish to fry and along with More, pinned Talbert with them as they wandered to the car. Penk nudged Talbert in his side with an elbow, but nothing they seemed to say or do was going to wash that blissful grin off Talbert’s face.
“Come on, fess up,” Muck insisted. “She was a nurse, right? I mean, she had to be. It wasn’t even that sexy a costume.”
“It’s not the costume that makes them sexy, it’s the idea,” More countered. “She wasn’t a nurse.”
“Was too!”
“Not in a million years.”
Talbert just kept strolling forward, his purposeful walk and his silence on the subject only driving the remaining three members of the Express to start bickering louder than before about whether or not Talbert’s interest in women extended to the medical field of professionals.
By the time they got to the hospital, Bill was waiting in the hall.
“I got booted,” he explained with a sour look on his face. He was splitting his time winking at the nurse at the desk and conversing with the men as they arrived. “Buck said I was riling Joe and that the hospital couldn’t afford to go through that much morphine in one night. Can you believe that? Anyway, good thing you boys are here, my ass is getting real tired of hospital chairs. Nurses say they can’t even do anything about it,” he joked, winking once more at the girl behind the desk. “So, sweetheart, you said you were getting off soon?”
“As soon as my replacement arrives,” the woman agreed politely, even if she did happen to be looking Bill up and down with an appraising eye.
“Holy shit,” Penkala swore with a giddy laugh, elbowing Muck in the side.
“You have gotta be kidding me,” More muttered his complaint as the group of them watched that Smith girl with the nurse’s uniform walk down the hall. She only stopped to tug on Talbert’s collar and pull him into a long kiss, whispering some mysterious something into his ear before shifting to sit behind the desk.
There was a long look and a couple of hushed comments shared between she and the departing nurse and for all her earlier looks at Bill, suddenly all eyes were on Talbert.
“You have really fucking gotta be kidding me,” Bill deadpanned when it became all too clear what was about to happen. There was a long sigh and she was sidling up to Floyd Talbert, he of the female charms and asking questions about if he had really done all the things that Miss Smith had commented about in that short time they had spent conversing.
“Tough luck, Bill,” Luz offered. “Could be worse. You could be Joe Liebgott.”
“Why, what’s Joe doing?”
“I’m pretty sure the law considers it stalking,” Penk offered helpfully.
“Getting even with Webster in some way that requires getting the keys to every hotel he’s in on the trip. He’s spending the night calling ahead and getting copies of every last one,” Luz interjected, draping himself over Penkala and Muck’s shoulders to join the conversation. “It’s sad, really. Sad. Almost as sad as Malark sitting alone in that room of his.”
“Not for that long,” the booming voice interrupted as Buck wandered out of the room. “Soon as I get back, I’m dragging him out for darts and drinks until I have to go play chaperone for Lipton and Speirs and I swear,” he muttered, “to god, if someone could just have mercy on me and shoot me, it wouldn’t be too soon.”
“Come on, get out of here,” Martin coaxed. “We’ll watch Joe.”
“No more morphine. Bill’s already gotten him on too much after they had an argument about who was the better outfielder,” Buck warned sternly, digging his keys out of his pocket and cuffing Bill upside the head. “Come on, Casanova, we’ll bring you to the bar and see what fish you can reel in.”
“Goddamn Talbert,” Bill was still muttering under his breath, intermingled with an Italian curse here and there.
“Hey uh, guys?”
“Yeah, Tab, we know,” Muck sighed. “Just pick us up in a couple hours when you’re done.”
With that, the change in shifts was official and the group of six (a man down with Talbert’s ineffable talents with women bagging him yet another encounter) wandered into Joe’s room to let out a raucous cheer of greeting.
“Hey!”
“Joe Toye, man of the night!”
“Brought you a cigar, buddy.”
“Fuck you guys,” Joe muttered hoarsely. “I thought I was gonna get some sleep.”
“What, in this league?” Luz cracked. “Never.”
*
“I thought we were staying in,” Malarkey was complaining from the bed where he hadn’t bothered to dress past the boxers that hung low on his waist. His hair was still a red jumble of a mess from being grabbed at by Buck. Their pre-practice tumbles in bed (‘warm-ups’, they had been calling them) had turned into ‘once-a-nightly’s and had then turned into ‘whenever-we-have-a-spare-moments’. “We were gonna try and break the three time record.”
The clock read 6:44 and Buck Compton was doing up his tie, having showered and done his best to look well-dressed. He was also going to be painfully punctual for the fear that Speirs might do something unseemly to him if he wasn’t.
“As much as Speirs doesn’t want me there tonight, I’ve got to be there for Lipton,” Buck said apologetically, watching Malarkey in the mirror. “You could come?”
“And watch an hour of back-and-forth lovers’ spat? Pass. I’ll wait until Babe goes to the hospital to relieve the guys. I think there was talk of a drinking game while we watch Anaconda when Muck and Penk get back,” he said excitedly, grabbing at his shirt and sliding into it. “We’re using tequila.”
“You’re brave men with defunct livers,” Buck said, ripping off a mock-salute. He leaned over the bed and pressed a firm kiss to Malarkey’s lips, one that was rife with the promise of a raincheck.
It would be the last ounce of pleasure he’d get for a very long while.
Just as suspected, the scene at the bar was torture at best. Buck had pulled up a chair to sit between Lipton and Speirs, both in the grips of what appeared to be a long-running staring contest that neither wanted to give up. They each had a Scotch and they each seemed determined to walk out of that bar the winner in their tense relationship.
“Don’t all greet me at once,” Buck joked, only to get resounding silence in response. He smiled tersely, glancing to Lip. “So, Lip, how’s things?”
“Good, Buck, thanks for asking,” he politely replied, though he didn’t budge his gaze from Speirs. “They’d be better if we could be elsewhere.”
“Funny, I thought they’d be better if we were talking,” Speirs countered. “And I’m just fine, Buck, thank you for coming to Carwood’s attempts to make this less awkward. Funny how well that worked, huh,” he noted wryly.
“Who needs another round, everyone? Great!” Buck mock-chipperly commented and glancing barwards, he sighed as he saw his salvation. “Jesus fucking Christ, thank you,” he muttered under his breath. “Webster!” He nearly catapulted himself over to the bar, ordering himself a vodka-tonic and sitting in the stool beside the writing man.
“Buck,” Webster greeted pleasantly. “I haven’t seen you since…”
“LA,” Buck filled in with a grin.
“That’s right,” Webster commented with a knowing and rueful smile. “You ‘borrowed’ my intern for the day and somehow managed to convince him to drop out of his promise to attend an Ivy school for UCLA,” he reminisced. “I was going to get a nice referral.”
“Can’t blame the boy for having taste,” Buck pointed out. “What’re you doing here?”
Webster held up his spiral notepad and then his beer, grimacing heavily. “Just got through a couple rounds of interviews with some of the league officials. The word they keep giving is that a decision has been made and they’ll let the community at large know as of next Monday. That’s…what, your Utah stop?”
“We leave for Vegas tomorrow, yeah,” Buck concurred. “So lemme ask you something,” he said, reaching for his drink and eyeing Speirs and Lipton for the best opportunity to slide back into the conversation. Now seemed a poor time as they were having a low and heated discussion with each other. “Why Express? You’d think that the way Joe Liebgott hounds you, you’d ask for a reassignment.”
Webster cradled his beer by the neck, shrugging idly. “You’re the best team in the league. I want to be affiliated with the talent,” he made his excuses. “And Joe’s harmless.”
“Gnats are harmless, doesn’t mean they aren’t annoying.”
“I can deal with annoying. Just keep winning,” he consulted and offered Buck the two drinks for Lipton and Speirs that he’d also come to get.
“Next Monday, huh?”
“Next Monday,” Webster confirmed. “And I don’t know what the decision is. They’re tight-lipped about it, sorry. They don’t tell us much of anything.” Buck offered a ‘what can you do’ shrug about it and Webster offered a nod. “Good luck at the game tomorrow,” he offered. “And uh, tell Lieb I said hi.”
“You’re just taunting him now, aren’t you,” Buck said knowingly.
But Webster was already back to his article to give a proper answer to that question. Buck steeled himself with three glasses in hand and found his way back to the table, hovering when he could finally hear the words to that quiet conversation.
“She’s been lying to you,” Lipton was calmly saying.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she’s not in love with me, Ron,” he countered. “She’s been in love with you this whole time and she hated that you picked me. She loves you, not me. And you slept with her.”
Their conversation was quickly overtaken by silence and Buck felt that there was no better time than right that second to descend with the drinks, feeling that more alcohol was just about the only cure that could help this conflict.
“So, Webster had some news about the league,” he offered, returning to the table as if there was no tension hanging thickly in the air and attempting to smother them heavily without even needing a pillow. “Turns out we’ll know our fates next Monday, how about that?”
“Carwood…”
“I wouldn’t lie,” Lipton said firmly, ignoring Buck’s re-entrance to the conversation. Buck felt about three times as uncomfortable as before and a glance back to Webster showed that he was shaking someone’s hand and taking another meeting, so that avenue of escape was out of the question. “Ron…”
“Excuse me,” Speirs interrupted curtly, pushing his chair back and making a brisk exit from the table and the bar.
“Official business, huh?” Buck commented idly, shooting Lipton a knowing glance before standing and reaching to grab Speirs’ untouched Scotch and sliding it over the table to Lipton. “Go on, you’re gonna need that.”
*
Babe was having trouble keeping his eyes open, seeing as he’d been giving the graveyard shift at the hospital (“Rookie gets it!” Muck had cheerfully announced, at which point Babe had asked when the rookie stopped getting the crap jobs and Toye had informed him in his morphine-induced haze that he had to deal until his replacement turned up). It was getting to be about two in the morning and he wasn’t going to last the night.
He still didn’t know how he was going to make it through practice the next day and thanked god that he probably wouldn’t be starting the game that afternoon. He figured if nothing else, this’d be good practice for their next stop when they got to Vegas and the team was staying out at all hours of the night gambling, drinking, and enjoying the wealth of women to choose from.
“You look like you’re well past exhausted.”
Babe started awake, searching the room for the lone voice. Toye was knocked out completely by the drugs and it was almost like an angel was there watching over him. Because, well hell, someone had to have pressed that Styrofoam cup of coffee into his hand. That someone just happened to be Gene Roe.
“What’re you doing here?” Babe mumbled sleepily, readjusting himself in the chair and clutching the cup with his hands, peering through half-lidded eyes to see Roe illuminated by the hospital lights and looking a bit too literally like an angel for Babe’s likings. “Thought everyone sane was asleep.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Roe commented, dragging a chair to the other side of the bed. “Thought I’d come pay Joe a visit when he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of guys.”
“So I’m what, harmless?”
Roe managed a hint of a shrug before hiding a smile behind his hand. “Something like that,” he agreed in that familiar and soothing drawl of his. “Drink your coffee, Edward,” he advised.
“Keep calling me Edward, I might not keep being so harmless,” he muttered into the caffeinated liquid. Still, Babe couldn’t exactly stop being so fucking thrilled about the fact that of all the people in the world, Roe was here with him, albeit because of a bout of insomnia and his concern for a teammate. “You hear about us being in trouble?”
“I did,” Roe agreed softly, nodding gravely. “Heard you were taking interviews and selling advertising all yesterday.”
Babe scowled, still displeased that the Express was now being officially sponsored by some energy drink just because they couldn’t finance the rest of the teams because the country wasn’t aware of the goddamn sport and the damn league. “Yeah, we sold the advertising. Made a couple bucks, so what?”
“It’s all working to something, Edward,” Roe assured, reaching over the bed to clasp his free hand (loosened from his grip when he pried it off to use it in the midst of his ranting) and suddenly their hands were twined over Joe Toye’s ankles and Babe really was starting to wonder when he’d fallen asleep for this to be happening. Babe shifted until his thumb was brushing against the pulse in Roe’s wrist and he glanced at the hospital blankets littering the bed beneath, drawing his hand back when things spent a solid moment chancing towards very awkward.
Babe took a long drag of his coffee, not sure what the hell was going on, and decided that if he was learning baseball from Bill, he might as well take a couple of life lessons seriously, too.
“You like me, don’t you?” he demanded, approaching the situation bluntly. “Or, you say you do. You like me as a guy, a friend, yeah?”
“Sure I do,” Roe agreed easily, looking a bit confused by the sudden turn in conversation.
“And I think you like me more than that,” Babe kept going, blazing forward into that unknown territory and putting it all on the line. It was just like Bill said, you had to force forward if you were ever going to make progress. “I mean, you’re here and you were at the laundromat and Perco said there was a call from you at the front desk waiting for me and…and I’m not saying,” he paused wildly, a bit of a howl of protest in his tone, “I’m not saying I’m gonna whale on you for it or anything, I just think you like me.”
There was a long pause and suddenly, Babe was feeling like a real idiot for saying anything.
“Well?” he kept going. “Do you?”
“What, like you?” Roe asked, clearly teasing. “Edward, you ever stop to notice the coffee’s exactly the way you like it?”
Fuck.
“No,” he said, feeling more than a bit stupid.
“Guarnere told me how you like it best,” he said, slowly shifting to get up from his seat. “I don’t take the time to research the coffee drinking habits of men that I don’t like.” He reached over to squeeze a still-unconscious-Toye’s shoulder before making his way to the doorway. It was only there that he lingered, chancing a look back at Babe. “So yeah,” he admitted with the hint of a nod. “I might like you some.”
With that, all the light was off him, whatever angelic presence was gone, and Babe’s coffee was rapidly turning cold.
“What the…” Joe Toye also happened to be rousing, glancing at Babe. “Was someone else here?”
“Yeah, Roe came to check on ya,” Babe agreed with a broad grin. “Not a bad guy, huh?”
“Yeah,” Toye agreed, lying back down and closing his eyes. “You’d think that.”
Babe couldn’t even bring himself to get pissy with him for making the same retorts that all of Express had been making since he joined the team. Hell, Roe might like him some. It was a good goddamn day.
tbc